Lisa Gray: Skating, not cancer, defined boy's short life

COMMENTARYSkating, not cancer, defined his life

Johnny Romano died of leukemia at age 10 as a skate-world celebrity. He helped raise money for the Make-A-Wish Foundation.

Johnny Romano died of leukemia at age 10 as a skate-world celebrity. He helped raise money for the Make-A-Wish Foundation.

Photo: FAMILY PHOTO

Photo: FAMILY PHOTO

Image
1of/3

Caption

Close

Image 1 of 3

Johnny Romano died of leukemia at age 10 as a skate-world celebrity. He helped raise money for the Make-A-Wish Foundation.

Johnny Romano died of leukemia at age 10 as a skate-world celebrity. He helped raise money for the Make-A-Wish Foundation.

Photo: FAMILY PHOTO

Lisa Gray: Skating, not cancer, defined boy's short life

1 / 3

Back to Gallery

First thing after school, Johnny Romano always jumped on his skateboard. He was a wiggly, can't-sit-still kid, a natural-born surfer, the first-grade boy that all the girls liked.

After school, he radiated the joy of an animal escaped from a cage.

But in May 2005, something was off. Johnny drooped even on his skateboard. He said he felt "wobbly," and his gums were sore. When he wasn't excited even by the prospect of a surf trip, his mom took him to a doctor.

The pediatrician sent them straight to Texas Children's Hospital. Johnny, doctors said, had acute lymphoblastic leukemia, a cancer that kills one in five of the kids it strikes. His red blood cell count was so low that he shouldn't have been able to stand up, much less ride a skateboard. He needed to start a three-year course of chemotherapy right away.

And so the pattern was set: the tension that, for those three years, defined Johnny Romano's life.

On one side was cancer. On the other, his skateboard.

The super-intense first phase of chemo lasted three months. Johnny lost his energy and his catlike grace. His belly swelled. And he walked like Frankenstein.

His shoulder-length hair — a secret source of pride — fell out, and he hid his bald head under a stocking cap. His dad, Mike, shaved his own head in solidarity. And Joey, Johnny's 9-year-old brother, cut off his mohawk.

The chemo lightened up in July, which is not to say that it became light. At the hospital, Johnny received chemo IVs every two weeks, and at home, he took pills.

But his walk grew fluid again, and his body regained its old shape.

Johnny, however, often seemed depressed. One day he told his mom, Julie, that he wanted to go to the skate park near their house in north Houston. Doctors had forbidden any recreation with wheels, but she thought a few minutes on a ramp might lift his dark mood.

It did. They stayed three hours.

Mike worried that Johnny wasn't ready to skate. Mike had been a serious skater himself, the kind of kid who built ramps in the backyard, and he worried that Johnny might attempt things his body couldn't yet deliver. With a leukemia-weakened immune system, even a scraped knee could spell disaster.

But even Mike relented after a couple of weeks. Before work one morning, he took Johnny to the park. The place was empty, which suited Mike. He figured empty ramps were safer. Johnny liked them for a different reason: He didn't like people to see him practice. He didn't want anyone to see him struggle.

Johnny wasn't the kind to take risks. He was methodical. Learning a trick, he'd take it slow, making the jumps low, going high only after he'd perfected the technique. Eventually, he made the trick look easy.

Mike had forgotten how much he loved watching Johnny skate. He was a little kid, of course, so he didn't know many tricks, and even before chemo, he didn't have the strength of an older skater.

But Johnny had style. It showed in the little movements of his hands, in the way that he somehow looked right on his board. That, Mike knew, was the surest sign of talent: It's easier to learn a trick than to look good doing it.

On his lunch hour, Mike started taking Johnny to the skate park. Johnny's skating improved, and after hospital treatments, he'd head straight for his skateboard. Even after a spinal tap, he'd at least pop an Ollie.

That simplest jump, Mike figured, was Johnny's way of checking himself out. If he could skate, he was still OK.

'Roll forever'

After Johnny was diagnosed, one of Julie's friends, a woman whose daughter had cancer, advised her to sign up with the Make-A-
Wish Foundation
. Julie didn't want to. Johnny was really sick, but he wasn't going to, you know, die.

Her friend insisted.

Johnny's big official wish was to go to Hawaii and meet pro surfers. But in October the foundation also granted him a little preliminary wish. He and his brother were invited to meet the pros at the annual Texas Skate Jam, a contest that raised money for Make-A-Wish.

At first Johnny was nervous around the Adio Footwear team, guys whose moves he'd studied on the Internet and Fuel TV. But Kenny Anderson gave him a skateboard, and Alex Chalmers joked that if Johnny lost his hair again, he could have the hair that Alex recently cut off.

He also met a skater legend from the 1980s, Jim Thiebaud, the founder of Real Skateboards. Johnny wasn't much older than Jim's son. After Jim returned to San Francisco, he stayed in touch with Mike.

One night on the phone, Jim asked Mike whether a custom-made Real skateboard would cheer up his son. Absolutely, said Mike. In fact, he asked, could Jim make two? Then Johnny could hang one on his wall to see when he was stuck in bed.

Jim made a lot more than two. In February 2006, Real released a Johnny Romano model, a kid-sized, black deck emblazoned with a Ramones-like presidential seal. "Roll forever," said the banner in the eagle's mouth.

And with that, Johnny Romano, age 7, became the world's youngest pro skater.

'True heart, man'

By April 2008, when Johnny turned 10, he'd become a skate-world celebrity.

Real had added adult-sized Johnny Romano skateboards and planned a new model with a skull that Johnny had drawn himself. There were Johnny Romano T-shirts and Johnny Romano stickers. Adio sold a Johnny Romano shoe and Spitfire, a Johnny Romano wheel.

Johnny donated his royalties to the Make-A-Wish Foundation and posed for photos with enormous cardboard checks for thousands of dollars.

He skated on Fuel TV. He donated Johnny Romano skateboards to charity and autographed them for fans.

After his family moved to Galveston, he visited the island's City Council to lobby for a skate park. At skate parks, he loved meeting people who didn't know he had cancer. He liked being a Make-A-Wish benefactor, not a recipient.

But his luck didn't hold. In May, with only 10 more chemo treatments on his schedule, he relapsed.

His relatively manageable acute lymphoblastic leukemia had morphed into a nastier strain: acute myeloid leukemia. On Memorial Day, before he could start a new, more aggressive round of chemo, he began running a high fever. A bacterial infection, the kind a normal immune system could dispatch easily, sent him into septic shock. He nearly died.

Cancer was no longer his biggest problem. Before he recovered enough for chemo, he caught another bacterial infection, this one drug-resistant. Then came a fungal infection in his lungs. Julie and Mike grew used to the sight of crying doctors.

Still, Johnny clung to skating. Skaters from around the world sent him so many e-mails that Texas Children's Hospital ran out of printer paper. He watched skating videos. And on little toy skateboards, he skated with his fingers.

The ultra-cool guys at www.theberrics.com auctioned off signed skateboards to help cover hospital bills, and they posted videos urging Johnny to report, as soon as possible, to the top-secret Berrics, a warehouse skatepark whose location is known only to elite skaters such as Mike Mo Capaldi and Eric Koston.

But Johnny was fading. He'd long since lost his hair. His mouth was so sore he could hardly talk. His liver barely functioned. Mainly, he slept.

But on Sept. 22, Johnny stayed awake all night. In the hospital room, he watched surf videos with his dad.

The next morning, he died.

The aftermath

Somehow, in the aftermath of Hurricane Ike, Mike and Julie found a shiny, candy-apple-red coffin, one they knew Johnny would have liked. And despite Ike's wreckage, hundreds of people came to Johnny's funeral.

Because the cemetery grounds were still covered with debris, only two limos were allowed in. Beside the grave, his closest family and friends plastered the red coffin with Johnny Romano stickers. "Roll Forever," they said.

In the weeks since, the Romanos have been learning to live without Johnny.

A few weeks ago, his mother Googled his name and found 14 pages of Web links. Skaters she'd never met posted tributes, sent e-mails and wrote comments on her blog.

It's like Kurt Cobain, Julie thought. Johnny, in death, is even more popular than in life. Somehow that makes her feel better.

She's touched that the annual Texas Skate Jam, which takes place Saturday at the Southside Skatepark, has been renamed the Johnny Romano Skate Jam. The next day, pros plan to appear at the Lee and Joe Jamail Skatepark for "Rock the Cradle," a World Cup event. Donations will help cover Johnny's medical bills.

Julie and Mike plan to start a Johnny Romano foundation to support research on childhood leukemia. Johnny, of course, would rather be remembered for skating than for cancer. But the point of the foundation is to get past the struggle with leukemia — to make slow methodical research gains until, finally, beating it becomes easy, something kids can pull off with grace, and maybe even style.